Figure 1.--This German boy wears a standard sailor collar. There were, however, countless variations on the basic traditional style. These includes variations on the detailing, color, and shap. The traditional middy blouse had an open collar. The sailor collar was often worn with a dicky, but during the summer the dickey was often removed. . |
The sailor suit was basically a comfortable style for boys. Boys commonly wore middy blouses with traditional collars, meaning like the collars worn on actual naval uniforms. There were, however, countless variations on the basic traditional style. These includes variations on the detailing, color, and shap. Commonly the collar was the same colot as the suit itself. There were, however, blouses with collars in contrasting colors. Here we see a white blouse with a blue collar (figure 1). We also note blue blouses with white collars. A good example here is an unidentified Berlin boy. The traditional middy blouse had an open collar. The sailor collar was often worn with a dicky, but during the summer the dickey was often removed. The sailor collar was not a stiff collar. Some mothers not quite happy with this informality, added a stiff collar. A good example of a boy with a stiff collar is Kurt Mahlke. We are not sure just why German mothers did this, seemingly there was an element of comfort associated with informality. Thus for more formal occassions these uncomfortable stiff collasrs were added. This was, however, not common. We note both traditional an non-traditional styles of sailor collars.
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